School children who see the exhibits in the Creation Museum in Kentucky will be confused when they learn in school that the universe is 14 billion years old rather than 6,000. Those who believe God created the heavens and the Earth in six days about 6,000 years ago say their views are finally being represented by the Christian creators of the 27 million $ sprawling museum.
Exhibits show the Grand Canyon took just days to form during Noah’s flood, dinosaurs coexisted with humans and had a place on Noah’s Ark, and Cain married his sister to people the earth, among other Biblical wonders. Creation Museum in Kentucky have the dinosaurs sail on the ship — Noah’s Ark, to be precise and depicts the Bible’s first book, Genesis, as literal truth.A Gallup poll last year showed almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years. Three of 10 Republican presidential candidates said in a recent debate that they did not believe in evolution.
The truth is somewhere nicely poised in between the creationists stance and the Intelligent design proponents. Two books definitely help establish a good position for a seeker of truth..
With his first book, Darwin’s Black Box, Behe, a professor of biology at Lehigh University, helped define the controversial intelligent design movement with his concept of “irreducible complexity.” Now he attempts to extend his analysis and define what ev olution is capable of doing and what is beyond its scope. Behe strongly asserts, to the likely chagrin of young earth creationists, that the earth is billions of years old and that the concept of common descent is correct. But beginning with a look at malaria and the sickle cell response in humans, Behe argues that genetic mutation results in only clumsy solutions to selective pressures. He goes on to conclude that the statistical possibility of certain evolutionary changes taking place is virtually nil. Although Behe writes with passion and clarity, his calculations of probability ignore biologists’ rejection of the premise that evolution has been working toward producing any particular end product. Furthermore, he repeatedly refers to the shortcomings of “Darwin’s theory-the power of natural selection coupled to random mutation,” but current biological theory encompasses far more than this simplistic view. Most important, Behe reaches the controversial conclusion that the working of an intelligent designer is the only reasonable alternative to evolution, even without affirmative evidence in its favor.
‘Billions of missing links’ is the second book.
Despite living a century before Karl Popper, the great philosopher of Science, Darwin understood that any genuine scientific theory had to include the possibility of falsification. He therefore suggested in 1872 that if any complex organ (or organism) existed which could not have evolved from successive small steps or “modifications” that his theory would “ultimately break down.” The bulk of this book by Geoffrey Simmons is an attempt to do just that. In it he quickly surveys the plant and animal kingdoms and finds numerous instances of living organisms with traits so unique and highly adapted that, he argues, they could not have evolved in short successive steps.
Dr. Geoffrey Simmons focuses on the millions of structures and systems on the Earth that came about all at once, entire…with no preceding links, no subsequent links, no “sideways” links.
To illustrate, he surveys examples like…
the hummingbird and its circulatory system
insects and insect–eating plants
the role of the thousands of species of viruses
chemical signals and the sensory apparatus that detects them
the self–regulating capacity of the Earth’s ocean/air/soil system
It’s clear: Nature contains only leaps, not links. Only the intelligence and purpose of an all–powerful Designer can explain the intricate creatures, connections, and “coincidences” everywhere.I learned more interesting information about the animal kingdom from this book than I have gleaned in the rest of my life. Stories of the cell from hell, cockroaches running 3 times faster than cheetahs, the weaponry possessed by insects, hibernation and estivation, migration, etc. etc. etc. kept me entertained, amazed, and edified all at the same time. My appreciation for bacteria and even viruses went from zero to 90 in 4 pages.Did you know the pupil of your eyes and the tip of your nose forms an equilateral triangle? The tip of you nose forms another one with the edge of your lips? That a square exists between your pupils and your lips’ edge? In fact your body contains many such wonders. The belly bu tton is the exact center of a circle that you can make with your body. Design or Chance….interesting.
According to Fritz Ward a commentator the most powerful argument a defender of Darwin could offer would be to take the opposite approach to Simmons altogether. Where Simmons has pointed to hundreds of examples of uniqueness among plants and animals in the natural world, a Darwinist (not a term they like, but much nicer and more accurate than the descriptions they make of ID theorists) might point to similarities in the animal kingdom. The human genome, they note, is very similar to that of a chimp (90-98%, depending on which source you read). Indeed, our genome shares about half the DNA sequences of a banana. Positive proof, they might argue, for a single tree of life. But then again, it could be DNA sequencing is not a very useful measure.
Ronald Cohen sums up the Darwinian predicament very skilfully he says that Darwin’s challenge to his theory which was “if something could be shown to have not developed through slow steps my theory would absolutely break down”. It certainly has broken down. So now Darwinists say it has not broken down but then they themselves put forth unobserved scenarios to try to preserve the theory. Big Surprise, evolutionary scientists are humans too all of them have a bias like all humans.
iqbal.latif@gmail.com
“Thou Shalt Not Lie”
There is a way out of the dilemna. The Universe has been in existence for billions of years. But then we can add that God destroyed the whole thing and recreated the world some six thousand years ago.
Since we are determined to fool ourselves, might as well make it logical.